Choosing your niche: the social ecology of the International Baccalaureate Diploma in Australia

Abstract

Catherine Doherty is a sociologist of education with interests in internationalisation of curriculum and pedagogy across sectors.Allan Luke is a research professor working in educational policy, curriculum studies, Indigenous education and literacy.Paul Shield is a research fellow in quantitative methodologies for educational research .Candice Hincksman is a senior research assistant and doctoral candidate in statistics. The International Baccalaureate's branding and reputation targets academic high achievers aiming for university entrance. This is an empirical examination of the growing popularity of this transnational secondary credential amongst local populations in Australia, focusing on its uptake across the community, and the discourses underpinning its spread and popularity. This paper reports on online surveys of 179 parents and 231 students in schools offering the IB as an alternative to Australian state curricula. It sets out to understand the social ecology of who chooses the IB and who it chooses. Statistically significant differences between IB and non-IB choosers were found in terms of family income, parent education, student aspirations, transnational lifestyles, and neoconservative, neoliberal and cosmopolitan beliefs. The analysis demonstrates how the reproduction of advantage is accomplished through choice behaviours in stratified educational markets.Keywords: International Baccalaureate, selectivity, neoliberalism, neoconservatism, cosmopolitanism, transnationalism. This paper explores a relatively new educational phenomenon: the presence of a transnational secondary credential within local curricular markets that historically have been monopolised by a state-level certification. Over its 40 year history, the International Baccalaureate Diploma has been typically associated with international schools for expatriate communities in the US, Canada, UK, Asia and Europe (Bunnell, 2008). However, this ambit has recently expanded to offering a branded alternative in private and government schools with local catchments, enabled by regulatory regimes encouraging competition with state schooling and its official curriculum. In 2011, the IB was offered in a total of 11 state-funded schools, and 51 independent schools in Australia. This ratio is higher in the UK, (139 of the 219 IB The IB by designThe IB is the prototypical transnational school curriculum with its origins in the needs of mobile transnational elites (Fox, 1985). The norm in OECD countries has been for secondary curricula to remain under the jurisdiction of the state, province or nation both to facilitate pathways to matriculation and post-secondary participation, and to serve the distinctive knowledge, civics and values of nations. In the last decade, the (1) retrospective canonical knowledge and habits of mind, and (2) emergent forms of 'intercultural capital' (Goldstein, 2007) that will facilitate prospective participation in transnational economies (Resnick, 2008). The IB's broader impactThough enrolling only a small proportion of Aust...

Sociology of international education – an emerging field of research

“…The acquisition of this 'international capital' by advantaged families contributes to growing gap between private schools and public schools (for the poorer) in the Brazilian context. Doherty et al (2012), also in this issue, contend that when the 'cultural capital' concept is applied to international education and more specifically to IB schools in Australia, two distinctive elements are blended: (1) retrospective canonical knowledge and habits of mind and (2) emergent forms of 'intercultural capital' that will facilitate prospective participation in transnational economies. Another augmented use of Bourdieu's cultural capital is the 'cosmopolitan capital' developed by Weenink (2008) through which he analyses the way parents prepare their children for the global world by enrolling them in international tracks in the Netherlands.…”

“…Similarly, Doherty (2009) deduces that the growing interest in the IB in both state and private schools in Australia corresponds to a quest by middle-class parents for a 'rare' education product, which represents a 'sign of distinction'. Moreover, in their 'Choosing your niche: The social ecology of the IB Diploma in Australia' in this issue, Doherty et al (2012) demonstrate how the reproduction of advantage is accomplished through choice behaviours in stratified educational markets.…”

Creating Cosmopolitan Subjects: The Role of Families and Private Schools in England

“…Drawing on Brooks and Waters (2015) and Doherty et al (2012), we consider the possibilities for cosmopolitanism opened up through the provision of the International Baccalaureate (IB) and the promotion of university education abroad. Of the four schools in our study, only St George's (coeducational boarding school) offered the IB and the vast majority of students taking this qualification were overseas students -from Europe and Asia.…”

“…The force with which transnational mobility and cosmopolitanism is claimed as being essential to secure a competitive advantage in the labour market is driving families, schools and universities to provide such opportunities -through families moving abroad or sending their children abroad for secondary or tertiary education (Kenway and Fahey, 2014;Rizvi, 2005;Waters, 2008); through families choosing 'international schools' Resnik, 2012) or international qualifications such as the International Baccalaureate (Doherty et al, 2012); through schools linking with other similar types globally (Rizvi, 2014); through exchange programmes, especially in higher education (Findlay et al, 2012;van Zanten and Maxwell, 2015); and through community service activities in southern or developing world contexts (Allan and Charles, 2014;Howard et al, 2014).…”

Comparison as translation: Internationalisation in the International Baccalaureate and Taiwanese schooling

“…IB programs become an alternative to governmental curricula that appeal to local families rather than typically for transnational elites (Bunnell, 2010;Doherty, Luke, Shield, & Hincksman, 2012). And Taiwanese internationalisation of schooling is, decidedly, a national policy for local families that aims to "locally internationalised".…”